Showing 3 posts tagged with "dog s energy"
A bit of a departure today from my usual, lengthy posts...
The Three Big Questions
Whenever you’re training your dog, or even if you’re just out walking or playing with him (or her) in the park, there are three questions you can ask yourself that will hopefully make you a better dog trainer, a better owner, and maybe even a better human being:
- What can I learn from my dog today about dogs and training?
- How can I tune into my dog’s energy and use it in teaching him (or her) how to obey me?
- Is there anything my dog’s behavior can teach me about myself so that I can become a better trainer or owner?
LCK
Those of you who’ve listened to Kevin Behan’s radio interview heard him talk about the two types of energies operative in canine behavior: electricity and magnetism. Some of you may have also read the comments section of my last post, where I gave a response to Summer’s mommy about a problem she’s been having in getting her dog to do any off-lead heel without vocalizing. This post begins with part of that exchange:
Summer's Mommy: One question, sometimes she gets so riled up with the exercise that she wants to bite my left arm. I think it’s somewhat cute, but in competition that would lose me some points. Also she can get quite vocal (growling, short staccato barks) when she's in drive in the heel. Again, more areas where I can lose points. Do you have any suggestions on how to convert that drive that's being manifested into the biting/barking/growling and channel into just the act of heeling itself? I don't want to punish her or say no, but even as I praise her when she does it, she doesn't stop the behavior even with praise.
Here's my reply:
LCK: I would say that the biting is a result of a strong attraction (magnetism) while the vocalizing is an expression of nervous tension (electrical energy). She's also trying to "tell" you something. (What that is, I don't know.)
Remember, when she stayed with me I got to see her behavioral idiosyncrasies up close, and I said I thought that even though she's a bit tightly wound, she's also a very sensitive doggie. So it might also help to do more "chase me," "hup!" and "dance with me," and less hidden pops.
In other words, more magnetism, less electricity.
LCK
PS: Now that I think about it, the "chase me" will probably create more of a likelihood that she'll grip your arm while heeling, so while I might still do that, I would also probably give her some leash corrections whenever her teeth stray onto your arm. You have to be very fluid about it, and you can't pop her too hard; it should be just enough to damper the energy a little, but not hard enough to make her lose interest in chasing you.
Another way to work on this would be to do very short "chase me" sessions using a ball or tug toy as the focal point, and quickly end each go-through with a game of tug. Then gradually increase the length of the game, but then turn it into a "game" of off-lead "Heel!" And follow that with a ball throw or a game of tug, whichever she prefers. If she's still too bitey during the off-lead heel, go back to doing it on lead with the leash corrections to inhibit her from biting during the heel. The idea is to let her know that she can't bite while heeling, but that she'll get a big old payoff once she's finished.
I hope that helps!
Okay, so what do I mean exactly when I say more magnetism and less electricity? I’m essentially describing the difference between drive energy (i.e., desire/connectedness) and an overload of nervous tension (i.e., neediness/feeling disconnected).
The body of any animal has two basic energy systems. The nervous system (which includes the brain, the spinal cord, and all the neurons, axons, and dendrites), and the emotional system (limbic system, endocrine glands, sexual and sensory organs). Both types of energy are necessary. For instance, you can obtain a great deal of knowledge about a person’s in- ternal organs through an MRI machine: a magnetic resonance imaging. But it doesn’t work unless you plug it into the wall first.
As I’ve been thinking over Jacinta’s and Sang’s problems with their dogs, Summer and Roxy (Sang complains that Roxy gets overstimulated, which basically means she’s got too much electrical energy running through her system), and it seems to me that there are four basic ways to use, manage, control, and modulate your dog’s natural energy.
First let’s talk about the differences between electrical (neediness) and magnetic (desire) energies.
We all have survival needs, and the survival instinct exists to ensure that we act to protect ourselves from danger, drink when we’re thirsty, eat when we’re hungry, etc., etc. Sometimes, however, we attach survival feelings to something unrelated to our actual survival needs. How many times do we tell ourselves that we “need” to get to work on time, or that we “need” a raise or a new car. Another example is the kid, like Ralphie in The Christmas Story, who thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get the air rifle he wants for Christmas. When we attach neediness—survival energy—to non-essential things it screws us up, it puts stress on our bodies and actually makes us less efficient at getting what we really need. It also makes us feel unconnected from our co-workers, who—come on—aren’t going to kill us if we’re late to work, or our bosses, who are not going to kill us, and it makes us feel like our parents “don’t understand” us when they say it won’t kill us to not get exactly what we want for Christmas.
But what do we say? “You don’t understand! If I don’t get it I’ll die!”
Yet, here we are. We’re all still alive.
On the other hand, when you have a strong desire for something—and I mean pure desire, without any neediness attached—you often feel a sense of steadiness and calm as if your desire has created a direct link to whatever it is you want so badly. You are connected.
Desire is governed by the sex instinct; never mind the actual act of mating, the sex instinct governs the creative aspects of life, in all its forms. When you’re in a state of pure desire you almost know you’ll get what you want eventually, you have new, unexpectedly creative ideas on how to do things. And if you hold on to that feeling of desire—that fire in the belly—it will almost always bring some kind of positive results. It sets things in motion. This is what I mean when I say that desire has a kind of magnetic energy.
So electric energy runs your survival needs; it has a choppy feel, it makes you feel alone, disconnected, it’s chronological, meaning it makes you feel the pressure of time, and it also causes the bad kind of stress on the body. Magnetic energy is desire; it has a smooth rhythm to it, it makes you feel connected, it’s timeless, and creates mostly the good kind of stress.
I think this is a helpful model in learning how to manage your dog’s energy. And as I see it, there are four basic ways to do that.
The Four Ways to Handle Your Dog’s Energy
One: Give your dog a satisfying “ground wire” to offload excess energy.
Ground wires include tug-of-war, fetch, play sessions with other dogs, the “eyes” exercise, and even taking your dog on long walks in nature. (Believe it or not, trees and grass are natural ground wires for a dog’s energy.)
I’m trying to codify everything here, but a lot of what I “know” about this stuff is intuitive or comes from my subconscious mind. I’ll give you an example: The other night I had a session with a new client. They’ve got a pit bull named Latte who was found on the street, emaciated, over a year ago. She’s reportedly been a lovely girl since then, very affectionate indoors, very obedient and willing to learn, but she’s started exhibiting occasional leash aggression recently.
When I came in and sat down, she was unable to settle down. We tried giving her a bone or a ball, but nothing seemed to work, so while I was discussing options, describing the possible source of the dog’s behavioral problems, and she was still at it, trying to jump all over me, I put my fingers between her teeth, hoping to give her a chance to ground her energy by mouthing my hand. She pulled away, zipped around the room a little, then settled next to me on the couch again and kind of “sneaked” in close and started to nibble my fingers, hoping I wouldn’t notice. I let her do that. Five minutes later she was sound asleep.
I didn’t even pay attention; that kind of thing happens a lot with the dogs I work with. But in a subsequent conversation with her owner, she told me she thought it was amazing that Latte had been so relaxed that she’d fallen asleep next to me on the couch. That’s when I remembered what I had done with my fingers, and by doing that what I had, in essence, given the dog permission to do: to use me as a ground wire. And that’s why she fell asleep.
Two: Upgrade the dog’s “wiring/hardware.”
This will give your dog a better ability to handle his excess energy levels on his own. Instead of just plugging him into a ground wire (like a tug rag), this would be similar to replacing old corroded wiring with newer, stronger, thicker wires. It’s also analogous to removing emotional blocks. This is where the pushing exercise comes in handy. Also, certain training exercises where the dog has to change emotional gears quickly—things like the “off-lead heel” or the “down-while-running” and conflict training—would also fall into this category. They make the dog’s energy system more productive and less wasteful.
Finally, the fasting exercise, described in Kevin’s book, and what I call the Frankenstein exercise is also helpful at removing emotional blocks in the dog’s system and getting it to run smoother. Kevin has a couple of versions of the Frankenstein exercise, described on Neil Sattin's blog.
Three: Drain the battery/shut down the system.
This is where a crate comes in handy. Another thing that helps is not feeding into the dog’s nervousness. That’s part of what worked with Latte the other night. If I had reacted to her energy with any kind of “dominance” or fear, she would’ve had even more trouble settling down. If the dog has no excess energy from you to feed off she’ll be able to calm down much quicker.
Four: Provide a transformer.
This is where praising the dog to settle his nerves works wonders. When a dog has too much nervous energy and you praise him, this will often help him relax. I’ve described this in more detail (excruciating detail, some might argue) in my article on praise. But in terms of energy exchange it works like this: the dog is nervous (electric energy), praise makes him feel connected to you (magnetic energy)—you’ve transformed that excess buzzing of electrical energy—which eventually has to find a way to ground itself, come hell or high water—into smooth magnetism, which has more of a gentle, steady hum to it. Make sense?
Interrupting the flow of electricity by applying light shocks on the collar, a well-timed throw chain; all of these things have a tendency, when applied to an overly nervous dog to shift her focus from choppy/disconnected/solo mood type behaviors to something more like a group mood feeling. Again, you have to be very careful and not apply too much pressure or you’ll get the opposite result.
I’m still working out the various ways of describing this stuff. As I said, so much of what I do is so deeply ingrained into my subconscious mind that I rarely pay any attention to what I’m doing anymore. It happens naturally, like breathing. But I hope this helps you understand the basic premise of how Kevin’s model—of the dog as an energy system—works.
I look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback and ideas on this.
LCK
How To Manage Your Dog’s Energy
Summer's Mommy: One question, sometimes she gets so riled up with the exercise that she wants to bite my left arm. I think it’s somewhat cute, but in competition that would lose me some points. Also she can get quite vocal (growling, short staccato barks) when she's in drive in the heel. Again, more areas where I can lose points. Do you have any suggestions on how to convert that drive that's being manifested into the biting/barking/growling and channel into just the act of heeling itself? I don't want to punish her or say no, but even as I praise her when she does it, she doesn't stop the behavior even with praise.
Here's my reply:
LCK: I would say that the biting is a result of a strong attraction (magnetism) while the vocalizing is an expression of nervous tension (electrical energy). She's also trying to "tell" you something. (What that is, I don't know.)
Remember, when she stayed with me I got to see her behavioral idiosyncrasies up close, and I said I thought that even though she's a bit tightly wound, she's also a very sensitive doggie. So it might also help to do more "chase me," "hup!" and "dance with me," and less hidden pops.
In other words, more magnetism, less electricity.
LCK
PS: Now that I think about it, the "chase me" will probably create more of a likelihood that she'll grip your arm while heeling, so while I might still do that, I would also probably give her some leash corrections whenever her teeth stray onto your arm. You have to be very fluid about it, and you can't pop her too hard; it should be just enough to damper the energy a little, but not hard enough to make her lose interest in chasing you.
Another way to work on this would be to do very short "chase me" sessions using a ball or tug toy as the focal point, and quickly end each go-through with a game of tug. Then gradually increase the length of the game, but then turn it into a "game" of off-lead "Heel!" And follow that with a ball throw or a game of tug, whichever she prefers. If she's still too bitey during the off-lead heel, go back to doing it on lead with the leash corrections to inhibit her from biting during the heel. The idea is to let her know that she can't bite while heeling, but that she'll get a big old payoff once she's finished.
I hope that helps!
Okay, so what do I mean exactly when I say more magnetism and less electricity? I’m essentially describing the difference between drive energy (i.e., desire/connectedness) and an overload of nervous tension (i.e., neediness/feeling disconnected).
The body of any animal has two basic energy systems. The nervous system (which includes the brain, the spinal cord, and all the neurons, axons, and dendrites), and the emotional system (limbic system, endocrine glands, sexual and sensory organs). Both types of energy are necessary. For instance, you can obtain a great deal of knowledge about a person’s in- ternal organs through an MRI machine: a magnetic resonance imaging. But it doesn’t work unless you plug it into the wall first.
As I’ve been thinking over Jacinta’s and Sang’s problems with their dogs, Summer and Roxy (Sang complains that Roxy gets overstimulated, which basically means she’s got too much electrical energy running through her system), and it seems to me that there are four basic ways to use, manage, control, and modulate your dog’s natural energy.
First let’s talk about the differences between electrical (neediness) and magnetic (desire) energies.
We all have survival needs, and the survival instinct exists to ensure that we act to protect ourselves from danger, drink when we’re thirsty, eat when we’re hungry, etc., etc. Sometimes, however, we attach survival feelings to something unrelated to our actual survival needs. How many times do we tell ourselves that we “need” to get to work on time, or that we “need” a raise or a new car. Another example is the kid, like Ralphie in The Christmas Story, who thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get the air rifle he wants for Christmas. When we attach neediness—survival energy—to non-essential things it screws us up, it puts stress on our bodies and actually makes us less efficient at getting what we really need. It also makes us feel unconnected from our co-workers, who—come on—aren’t going to kill us if we’re late to work, or our bosses, who are not going to kill us, and it makes us feel like our parents “don’t understand” us when they say it won’t kill us to not get exactly what we want for Christmas.
But what do we say? “You don’t understand! If I don’t get it I’ll die!”
Yet, here we are. We’re all still alive.
On the other hand, when you have a strong desire for something—and I mean pure desire, without any neediness attached—you often feel a sense of steadiness and calm as if your desire has created a direct link to whatever it is you want so badly. You are connected.
Desire is governed by the sex instinct; never mind the actual act of mating, the sex instinct governs the creative aspects of life, in all its forms. When you’re in a state of pure desire you almost know you’ll get what you want eventually, you have new, unexpectedly creative ideas on how to do things. And if you hold on to that feeling of desire—that fire in the belly—it will almost always bring some kind of positive results. It sets things in motion. This is what I mean when I say that desire has a kind of magnetic energy.
So electric energy runs your survival needs; it has a choppy feel, it makes you feel alone, disconnected, it’s chronological, meaning it makes you feel the pressure of time, and it also causes the bad kind of stress on the body. Magnetic energy is desire; it has a smooth rhythm to it, it makes you feel connected, it’s timeless, and creates mostly the good kind of stress.
I think this is a helpful model in learning how to manage your dog’s energy. And as I see it, there are four basic ways to do that.
The Four Ways to Handle Your Dog’s Energy
One: Give your dog a satisfying “ground wire” to offload excess energy.
Ground wires include tug-of-war, fetch, play sessions with other dogs, the “eyes” exercise, and even taking your dog on long walks in nature. (Believe it or not, trees and grass are natural ground wires for a dog’s energy.)
I’m trying to codify everything here, but a lot of what I “know” about this stuff is intuitive or comes from my subconscious mind. I’ll give you an example: The other night I had a session with a new client. They’ve got a pit bull named Latte who was found on the street, emaciated, over a year ago. She’s reportedly been a lovely girl since then, very affectionate indoors, very obedient and willing to learn, but she’s started exhibiting occasional leash aggression recently.
When I came in and sat down, she was unable to settle down. We tried giving her a bone or a ball, but nothing seemed to work, so while I was discussing options, describing the possible source of the dog’s behavioral problems, and she was still at it, trying to jump all over me, I put my fingers between her teeth, hoping to give her a chance to ground her energy by mouthing my hand. She pulled away, zipped around the room a little, then settled next to me on the couch again and kind of “sneaked” in close and started to nibble my fingers, hoping I wouldn’t notice. I let her do that. Five minutes later she was sound asleep.
I didn’t even pay attention; that kind of thing happens a lot with the dogs I work with. But in a subsequent conversation with her owner, she told me she thought it was amazing that Latte had been so relaxed that she’d fallen asleep next to me on the couch. That’s when I remembered what I had done with my fingers, and by doing that what I had, in essence, given the dog permission to do: to use me as a ground wire. And that’s why she fell asleep.
Two: Upgrade the dog’s “wiring/hardware.”
This will give your dog a better ability to handle his excess energy levels on his own. Instead of just plugging him into a ground wire (like a tug rag), this would be similar to replacing old corroded wiring with newer, stronger, thicker wires. It’s also analogous to removing emotional blocks. This is where the pushing exercise comes in handy. Also, certain training exercises where the dog has to change emotional gears quickly—things like the “off-lead heel” or the “down-while-running” and conflict training—would also fall into this category. They make the dog’s energy system more productive and less wasteful.
Finally, the fasting exercise, described in Kevin’s book, and what I call the Frankenstein exercise is also helpful at removing emotional blocks in the dog’s system and getting it to run smoother. Kevin has a couple of versions of the Frankenstein exercise, described on Neil Sattin's blog.
Three: Drain the battery/shut down the system.
This is where a crate comes in handy. Another thing that helps is not feeding into the dog’s nervousness. That’s part of what worked with Latte the other night. If I had reacted to her energy with any kind of “dominance” or fear, she would’ve had even more trouble settling down. If the dog has no excess energy from you to feed off she’ll be able to calm down much quicker.
Four: Provide a transformer.
This is where praising the dog to settle his nerves works wonders. When a dog has too much nervous energy and you praise him, this will often help him relax. I’ve described this in more detail (excruciating detail, some might argue) in my article on praise. But in terms of energy exchange it works like this: the dog is nervous (electric energy), praise makes him feel connected to you (magnetic energy)—you’ve transformed that excess buzzing of electrical energy—which eventually has to find a way to ground itself, come hell or high water—into smooth magnetism, which has more of a gentle, steady hum to it. Make sense?
Interrupting the flow of electricity by applying light shocks on the collar, a well-timed throw chain; all of these things have a tendency, when applied to an overly nervous dog to shift her focus from choppy/disconnected/solo mood type behaviors to something more like a group mood feeling. Again, you have to be very careful and not apply too much pressure or you’ll get the opposite result.
I’m still working out the various ways of describing this stuff. As I said, so much of what I do is so deeply ingrained into my subconscious mind that I rarely pay any attention to what I’m doing anymore. It happens naturally, like breathing. But I hope this helps you understand the basic premise of how Kevin’s model—of the dog as an energy system—works.
I look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback and ideas on this.
LCK
As promised, here's a description of the “eyes” exercise and how it works. Enjoy!
The “Eyes” Have It!
Before we get into the mechanics of the exercise, it’s important to under- stand how dogs experience the world. Clearly any given dog will have a somewhat different response to any number of different stimuli. However on the most basic, fundamental level there are a few simple principles at work, and they work all the time with all dogs, no matter the breed type or past history of abuse, etc. And those principles are based simply on how a dog reacts to shifts in energy, whether they’re brought about by changes in the environment or in the dog’s own internal energy. To a dog energy, no matter how weak or strong, comes in the form of simple emotions that are most often felt as either a feeling of attraction to something or a resistance to it, or a combination of the two. And just as in electricity, or any other type of energy for that matter, a dog’s natural form of energy, that of simple emotions, will tend to flow more freely toward an attractor while a resistor is something which dampers the level of energy by presenting some form of opposition to its ability to flow freely. One of our main goals in dog training is to stimulate a dog’s energy to flow toward us, not away. In other words, we want a dog to feel highly attracted to us emotionally, not resistant.
With me so far?
To a dog one of the primary natural attractors is prey, or anything that stimulates his predatory emotions such as a squirrel, a toy, another dog he likes to play with at the dog run, a human who plays fetch or tug with him (or who just feeds him), or even a leaf caught in a breeze.
The other polarity—that of resistance—is based on the need to be safe from harm, to avoid danger. In the wild a wolf has no natural predators except for—oddly enough—the same animals he and his pack members prey upon: elk, deer, moose, etc. They’re not really predators, of course; they’re not going to kill and eat the wolf. However, the wolf doesn’t know that. All he knows (or I should say feels) is that his energy, which was flowing so pleasurably toward an objective—involving a deep-rooted urge to bite what's moving away from him—has now been reversed. The moose is no longer an attractor but a resistor. In other words, when a wolf is chasing a moose he’s in predatory mode—full of strong feelings of attraction. If the moose turns and stands his ground, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And the primary trigger point for his feelings of resistance at that moment is the level of gaze that the moose has, which is exaggerated by his big antlers. In essence, the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by nothing but the moose’s eyes. And it doesn’t matter in the slightest if you replace the word wolf with proto-wolf, or proto-dog, or pre-doglike-canid, or whatever. The energetic essence of the situation even works with cat and mice.
When a puppy comes into the world he has to have some remnants of those wild, wolflike feelings within him; they’re part of his survival repertoire, what’s enabled the species to survive for hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer. And one of a pup’s first emotional or energetic reactions to a vertical human being, with eyes located way up high in a very big head, is that of unconscious resistance. (Remember this is all unconscious; the puppy doesn’t know what he’s feeling, he just feels it and reacts in a knee-jerk manner.) And as humans when we sense a pup’s “shyness,” what do we usually do? We come down to his level, breaking the tension and attempting to overcome his feelings of resistance toward us. Even a pup who is very friendly, showing no hesitation about coming toward us is in all likelihood experiencing strong feelings of resistance mixed with attraction (that’s why his tail wags or he gets wiggly, he has two opposing emotions working together in his body). And if you think about, even when the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by the eyes of the moose (or the cat by the mouse) he still has a strong feeling of attraction to that moose.
The “Eyes!” exercise has the effect of increasing your dog’s social attraction toward you, reducing his natural resistance, and has the added side-effect of grounding your dog’s energy whenever it starts to spin out of control. This makes it a great tool for curbing leash aggression, an overeager interest in squirrels, or even for training the recall.
Before we get started, remember, dogs respond to us on an unconscious level either as pack members (when we hang out at home), potential prey (when we play with them), and potential predators (because our level of gaze is the same as that of wolf’s only natural enemies). In the wild, eye contact can spell the difference between life and death. We want to make our dogs’ eye contact with us a solution to their problems, not a cause for concern or resistance to obeying us. We want to reduce resistance and amp up our attraction to them. And one way we can do that is by making our eye contact with our dogs a source of pleasure and satisfaction.
So here’s how we do the “Eyes!” exercise (as with most exercises where you’re using food, I personally wouldn’t do this with a dog who has food aggression, or whom I don’t already know pretty well):
Have your dog seated in front of you. Pet and praise him, holding the leash about 2-3 inches away from the collar. The leash is not there for the purpose of restraining the dog, or to keep him from doing anything he wants to. It’s basically just there to give him a feeling of being under control, and as a safety measure in case the dog gets too frustrated by the exercise (yes, the exercise will be frustrating initially). The reason you want to hold the leash so close to the collar is so that you can use that hand to pet him or scratch his neck if he gets too nervous.
Start feeding him some tasty treats. Then show him a treat, but hold it deliberately between your thumb and forefinger so that when he looks at it he’s also seeing a large negative space, almost like an eye. It’s not an eye, of course, but he’ll feel an unconscious attraction to that space and a mild nervousness, almost as if it were the eye of a predator.
Remember, this is an emotional reaction, not a conscious one. For instance, the workers at rubber plantations in Malaysia wear masks on the backs of their heads to prevent tigers from attacking them. And it works. But it doesn’t work because the tigers “think” the workers can see them. That would require a rudimentary theory of mind and even chimps don’t have that ability (or I should say they probably don’t—the jury is still out). So the tigers aren’t holding themselves back from attacking the workers because the they believe there are actual eyes staring at them from the back of the workers’ heads; they respond on a purely visceral, unconscious level to that negative space and its location in the general shape of the head. It’s something that’s embedded deep into the DNA of all predators and prey animals alike. The same principle applies to how your dog views that space between your thumb and forefinger. (I know this all sounds a little crazy, but you’ll see exactly what I mean once you’ve done it.)
After you’ve fed the dog a few treats, and formed your little make-believe eye with your thumb and forefinger, hold your arm out to the side, so that it and your torso are forming a right angle, and your hand is at the same level as your eyes. That level of “gaze” is very important.
Praise him a little, and if he shows nervousness, pet him a little. Then swoop the treat toward him, ending up 3-4 inches away. Keep that “eye” made by your thumb and forefinger visible to him the whole time. (If he tries to grab it before you swoop it toward him either swoop it further away or get him back into position with the leash, etc.)
If he tries to grab the treat when you swoop it close to him (which he probably will), swoop your arm back to its original, right-angle position, at the same level as your eyes. Keep repeating this – swoop it down to about 3-4 inches from the dog’s snout, then swoop it back up (but only if he makes an attempt to grab it). Then, when you swoop the treat toward him and you see that the dog is holding still or pull back, either physically or emotionally, hold it there, still and steady, about 3 inches from the dog’s snout. If he moves toward it again, swoop it back up.
At some point he’ll be staring at the treat while you’re holding it near him, not knowing how to get it, not knowing what you want him to do. And then suddenly, and perhaps very briefly, his eyes will dart over to yours. It’s as if he’s looking to you to help him solve this problem. The instant he looks at you immediately put the treat right into his mouth and praise him. You’ve not only given him the answer to his problem, as far as he’s concerned you are the answer.
Repeat a few more times until you’re able to read his facial expressions so that you can pretty much predict when his eyes are going to dart away from the treat and lock onto yours instead. Then your timing for giving him the treat will be more exact, and you can start adding the word “Eyes,” as you give him the treat. Next, do it with your non-dominant hand, depending on whether you’re right or left-handed, so he’ll understand this is only about making eye contact, not about which side the treat is coming from.
Next, increase the amount of time he’s able to hold your gaze before you give him the treat. Then you can start putting the treat closer and closer to his mouth, working up to the point where you’re actually dancing it on his nose, or pressing it against his upper lip, and he still won’t try to take it; he’ll keep looking you in the eyes instead.
Once he’s got that down, you can give him the “Eyes” command as a way of solving all sorts of other problems. Stand with him at the front door, holding the door slightly open. Say “Eyes,” and when he looks up at you, instantly open the door wide and let him go through. You can do the same thing at the dog run. You can also use it as part of a game of fetch. Hold a tennis ball in the “eye” position, give your dog the “eyes” command, and when he makes eye contact, immediately throw the ball for him to chase.
Once you have all that under your collective belts, if you have a leash-aggressive dog, whenever he gets worked up about seeing other dogs on his walks, say “Eyes,” and he’ll look at you instead. The same for dogs who become obsessed with seeing squirrels in the park. With sme dogs I like to play a game where I put the dog in a down/stay then toss a ball or treat in front of her. I wait for her to look away from the object, look me in the eyes, and then I say, “Okay! Get it!”
There are all sorts of applications!
With me so far?
To a dog one of the primary natural attractors is prey, or anything that stimulates his predatory emotions such as a squirrel, a toy, another dog he likes to play with at the dog run, a human who plays fetch or tug with him (or who just feeds him), or even a leaf caught in a breeze.
The other polarity—that of resistance—is based on the need to be safe from harm, to avoid danger. In the wild a wolf has no natural predators except for—oddly enough—the same animals he and his pack members prey upon: elk, deer, moose, etc. They’re not really predators, of course; they’re not going to kill and eat the wolf. However, the wolf doesn’t know that. All he knows (or I should say feels) is that his energy, which was flowing so pleasurably toward an objective—involving a deep-rooted urge to bite what's moving away from him—has now been reversed. The moose is no longer an attractor but a resistor. In other words, when a wolf is chasing a moose he’s in predatory mode—full of strong feelings of attraction. If the moose turns and stands his ground, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And the primary trigger point for his feelings of resistance at that moment is the level of gaze that the moose has, which is exaggerated by his big antlers. In essence, the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by nothing but the moose’s eyes. And it doesn’t matter in the slightest if you replace the word wolf with proto-wolf, or proto-dog, or pre-doglike-canid, or whatever. The energetic essence of the situation even works with cat and mice.
When a puppy comes into the world he has to have some remnants of those wild, wolflike feelings within him; they’re part of his survival repertoire, what’s enabled the species to survive for hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer. And one of a pup’s first emotional or energetic reactions to a vertical human being, with eyes located way up high in a very big head, is that of unconscious resistance. (Remember this is all unconscious; the puppy doesn’t know what he’s feeling, he just feels it and reacts in a knee-jerk manner.) And as humans when we sense a pup’s “shyness,” what do we usually do? We come down to his level, breaking the tension and attempting to overcome his feelings of resistance toward us. Even a pup who is very friendly, showing no hesitation about coming toward us is in all likelihood experiencing strong feelings of resistance mixed with attraction (that’s why his tail wags or he gets wiggly, he has two opposing emotions working together in his body). And if you think about, even when the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by the eyes of the moose (or the cat by the mouse) he still has a strong feeling of attraction to that moose.
The “Eyes!” exercise has the effect of increasing your dog’s social attraction toward you, reducing his natural resistance, and has the added side-effect of grounding your dog’s energy whenever it starts to spin out of control. This makes it a great tool for curbing leash aggression, an overeager interest in squirrels, or even for training the recall.
Before we get started, remember, dogs respond to us on an unconscious level either as pack members (when we hang out at home), potential prey (when we play with them), and potential predators (because our level of gaze is the same as that of wolf’s only natural enemies). In the wild, eye contact can spell the difference between life and death. We want to make our dogs’ eye contact with us a solution to their problems, not a cause for concern or resistance to obeying us. We want to reduce resistance and amp up our attraction to them. And one way we can do that is by making our eye contact with our dogs a source of pleasure and satisfaction.
So here’s how we do the “Eyes!” exercise (as with most exercises where you’re using food, I personally wouldn’t do this with a dog who has food aggression, or whom I don’t already know pretty well):
Have your dog seated in front of you. Pet and praise him, holding the leash about 2-3 inches away from the collar. The leash is not there for the purpose of restraining the dog, or to keep him from doing anything he wants to. It’s basically just there to give him a feeling of being under control, and as a safety measure in case the dog gets too frustrated by the exercise (yes, the exercise will be frustrating initially). The reason you want to hold the leash so close to the collar is so that you can use that hand to pet him or scratch his neck if he gets too nervous.
Start feeding him some tasty treats. Then show him a treat, but hold it deliberately between your thumb and forefinger so that when he looks at it he’s also seeing a large negative space, almost like an eye. It’s not an eye, of course, but he’ll feel an unconscious attraction to that space and a mild nervousness, almost as if it were the eye of a predator.
Remember, this is an emotional reaction, not a conscious one. For instance, the workers at rubber plantations in Malaysia wear masks on the backs of their heads to prevent tigers from attacking them. And it works. But it doesn’t work because the tigers “think” the workers can see them. That would require a rudimentary theory of mind and even chimps don’t have that ability (or I should say they probably don’t—the jury is still out). So the tigers aren’t holding themselves back from attacking the workers because the they believe there are actual eyes staring at them from the back of the workers’ heads; they respond on a purely visceral, unconscious level to that negative space and its location in the general shape of the head. It’s something that’s embedded deep into the DNA of all predators and prey animals alike. The same principle applies to how your dog views that space between your thumb and forefinger. (I know this all sounds a little crazy, but you’ll see exactly what I mean once you’ve done it.)
After you’ve fed the dog a few treats, and formed your little make-believe eye with your thumb and forefinger, hold your arm out to the side, so that it and your torso are forming a right angle, and your hand is at the same level as your eyes. That level of “gaze” is very important.
Praise him a little, and if he shows nervousness, pet him a little. Then swoop the treat toward him, ending up 3-4 inches away. Keep that “eye” made by your thumb and forefinger visible to him the whole time. (If he tries to grab it before you swoop it toward him either swoop it further away or get him back into position with the leash, etc.)
If he tries to grab the treat when you swoop it close to him (which he probably will), swoop your arm back to its original, right-angle position, at the same level as your eyes. Keep repeating this – swoop it down to about 3-4 inches from the dog’s snout, then swoop it back up (but only if he makes an attempt to grab it). Then, when you swoop the treat toward him and you see that the dog is holding still or pull back, either physically or emotionally, hold it there, still and steady, about 3 inches from the dog’s snout. If he moves toward it again, swoop it back up.
At some point he’ll be staring at the treat while you’re holding it near him, not knowing how to get it, not knowing what you want him to do. And then suddenly, and perhaps very briefly, his eyes will dart over to yours. It’s as if he’s looking to you to help him solve this problem. The instant he looks at you immediately put the treat right into his mouth and praise him. You’ve not only given him the answer to his problem, as far as he’s concerned you are the answer.
Repeat a few more times until you’re able to read his facial expressions so that you can pretty much predict when his eyes are going to dart away from the treat and lock onto yours instead. Then your timing for giving him the treat will be more exact, and you can start adding the word “Eyes,” as you give him the treat. Next, do it with your non-dominant hand, depending on whether you’re right or left-handed, so he’ll understand this is only about making eye contact, not about which side the treat is coming from.
Next, increase the amount of time he’s able to hold your gaze before you give him the treat. Then you can start putting the treat closer and closer to his mouth, working up to the point where you’re actually dancing it on his nose, or pressing it against his upper lip, and he still won’t try to take it; he’ll keep looking you in the eyes instead.
Once he’s got that down, you can give him the “Eyes” command as a way of solving all sorts of other problems. Stand with him at the front door, holding the door slightly open. Say “Eyes,” and when he looks up at you, instantly open the door wide and let him go through. You can do the same thing at the dog run. You can also use it as part of a game of fetch. Hold a tennis ball in the “eye” position, give your dog the “eyes” command, and when he makes eye contact, immediately throw the ball for him to chase.
Once you have all that under your collective belts, if you have a leash-aggressive dog, whenever he gets worked up about seeing other dogs on his walks, say “Eyes,” and he’ll look at you instead. The same for dogs who become obsessed with seeing squirrels in the park. With sme dogs I like to play a game where I put the dog in a down/stay then toss a ball or treat in front of her. I wait for her to look away from the object, look me in the eyes, and then I say, “Okay! Get it!”
There are all sorts of applications!
—LCK
